


Attachments.

by WritingPink



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: About what you'd expect from prison angst, Canon Compliant, Clay | Dream Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Dream Smp, Dream is thrown in prison, Dream misses george, Dreamon, Heavy Angst, M/M, No beta reader, Prison break AU pog, Ranboo Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Sapnap is a prison guard I guess, Season 2 Finale of Dream SMP, Seriously my boy was done dirty, Techno doesn't answer his favor, but george still likes dream, endgame could be either ship read to find out >:), i want to write dream's backstory so there, please dont click on this i have no idea if i have the motivation to finish this, possession antics possibly, sapnap got with george, yeah i like PAIN
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingPink/pseuds/WritingPink
Summary: Ranboo needs answers, and the only one who can provide them is Dream, who's been stuck in prison for months. His resolve is tested as he meets him face to face and starts to realize that Dream, contrary to what he's claimed, does have attachments.Attachments to a very specific person.George.However there's a slight complication with this....George is with Sapnap.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound/Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	1. Prologue

Ranboo approached the cold steel bars tentatively, like stepping on the wrong block could set off a trap. The man before him doesn't spare a look at him. He thought he can see facial hair beneath his chin, and although his face was staring down at his lap, Ranboo doesn’t need to see it to know he has eye bags. 

"Dream?" Ranboo stopped before him, his back haunched to look down at him. "I want to talk."

The other has nothing to say to him. It's as if Ranboo was speaking to the obsidian wall behind him, not at him. Not a muscle was moved, not an inch was budged. Dream was rigid, unmoving.

"Dream?" This time his fingers found cold steel and curled around it. The gloved texture against solid metal made Ranboo feel like he couldn't get a good hold on the material. He was lost in the feeling, wondering how it must be to live surrounded by nothing but this and the hardest material known to their world.

"Will you listen to me?" Ranboo kept going, not sure if he was even speaking to the right person at this point. "I need to know if you really did blow up the community house. Answer me honestly, no tricks." His slender digits moved to another object to grip, and this time it was the padlock. "I want to-"

"I'm surrounded by the same block." Dream's eyes were unfocused as he looked up at him. Ranboo was stunned to see that they've lost their color, being this glassy milk-like consistency instead of their usual hue. "The same block I used to surround L'Manburg." 

It was the mining fatigue. This realization dawned on Ranboo, and he dove a hand into his pockets to find a bottle of milk. He doesn't interrupt the prisoner as he goes on. 

"I was on top of the world with this obsidian. I was unstoppable. My word was gospel. What I said became law. No one dared oppose me. We were happy. When everyone listened to me, we were like one big family." 

"We weren't..." Ranboo could only whisper beneath his tone, afraid to talk over him even when he was in this state. His hands found a clear bottle with liquid matching the pupils of the inmate. "We weren't a family.”

Dream finally looked at Ranboo for the first time since he'd entered the prison, and he could hear him suck in a breath. How could he even describe his reaction? Was it mirth? Shock? It seemed as if Dream was rediscovering how to breathe once more. But at the same time, it looked as if he'd sucked in mustard gas, dying as his lungs collapsed on themselves. 

His face was sunken, bare cheekbones with barely any fat on them. His eye bags were dark enough to make Ranboo think he'd rubbed soot there instead. He looked about half the frame he last remembered him having. This was not the same man who blew up a nation, deceived on the daily, and struck fear into people's hearts from just the utterance of his name. This was a shadow, a pathetic afterthought that was more a husk than a person.

"No." Dream started, then stopped. He opened his mouth, and Ranboo could see yellow teeth. He closed it, reconsidered, and screamed, "NO!"

"Shush-" Ranboo nearly dropped the bottle, his dual-colored eyes darting around and hoping no one heard him.

"We were a family, George." Dream was standing, skeletal-like hands gripping the bars of his cage."Why did you leave me all alone? Why did you let HIM take me from you? Everything the sun touched was yours. Why did you forsake all I've worked for to bring you this glory? Why did you throw it all away for GODDAMN SAPNAP?"

Ranboo could hardly keep up with him. The incoherent screaming of a worn, nearly, no, practically insane man shook him down to his core. He wouldn't wish this on his worst enemy. The months Dream must have spent in isolation with no partner but his regrets and longings was a fate worse than death. The wear of his time here was evident in something as simple as his bodily appearance. But what was going on deep inside his head? How far gone was he? How many times did his pleading fall on deaf ears as he recluded back into a purple corner, head in his knees and voice dying in his throat? 

For someone as "evil" and "dangerous" as Dream, Ranboo felt a kind of pity for him that only came for the kicked underdog. Humiliated in front of every member of the SMP, reduced to a laughingstock imprisoned in his own kingdom and left for dead with guards who scarcely came to feed him... The punishment, to him, far outweighed the crime. 

Dream was already running out of breath, horribly out of shape as he felt spent from just shouting. A heaving chest and bloodshot eyes was all that remained of Dream's short fit, and he was about to remove his palms from the bars and retire to his usual hours of lonesome sulking.

Ranboo locked a hand on top of one of Dream's tiny knuckles, knuckles that had diminished in size from a lack of sustenance. He effectively held him in place as his other hand came to stick the milk bottle between the bars. 

"Drink up. We've got some digging to do."


	2. A Rock and a Hard Place

When Ranboo first came across the idea of visiting Dream within the infamous Pandora's vault, he expected there to be some outlandishly ridiculous security measures in place for it to live up to its name. 

But without their head warden, Ranboo practically got to waltz into the place without raising an eye. He was only stopped at the last door, where he lied about wanting to see one of the lower-level criminals and got a half-hearted patdown that felt more like the work of a shopper observing an article of clothing.

Still, the carefree nature of the guards was justified by the innate defenses the prison had without them. It already drained Ranboo to jump past the walls of lava with his teleportation. Despite the age of the elder guardians, their potency was still enough to warrant the occasional sip of milk as he navigated the endless hallways to find Dream.

It felt surreal to even make it this far. But as he stood back and crashed his pickaxe down on the padlock separating him and Dream, the moment solidified its reality. He was really standing here, having infiltrated Pandora’s Vault, with plans of escape that had yet to sour. 

Making his way into the cell, he began to dig out the wall, knowing they’d go through several layers of this stuff before encountering boiling hot lava. Fire resistance would make it survivable, but there was no telling how Dream would fare in this state. Swallowing potions, then immediately swimming through a liquid with a tar-like consistency on a time limit… Ranboo would most certainly have to teleport them past that phase.

As Ranboo dug out their path to freedom, Dream held the milk in his palms but didn’t register that there was a bottle cap on it. A single attempt to put it between his lips was made before rendering all of his efforts halted. He set the bottle back down beneath his toes, shrinking into the corner of the room. 

Ranboo thought he was about to start curling up, but he was actually bent over the lid of a chest. Each of his motions were languid, similar to a sloth’s. One finger moved at a time, the lifting of the container’s top done like he didn’t care which way it’d open. It was a far cry from how he gripped at the bars of his cage and hollered at “George.”

Several large volumes of books were procured from the chest. Given how he was taking them out one by one and was barely dipping his hand in, Ranboo could deduce that the chest- about half his height- was filled to the brim with books. 

“We- we can’t bring all those. And drink the milk soon, your movements are slowing down.” He had done research about the side effects of the mining fatigue these Elder Guardians cast on their victims. Often the fatigue would come in waves instead of an insufferably constant affliction, the worst of it being a wash of dizzying vertigo that left the sufferer disoriented and confused. Of course, this was only a side effect, as its main purpose was to make one’s limbs feel gravitationally drawn to the floor. 

What worried Ranboo was that this was a side effect refreshing its strength from its dwindling every 5 minutes. If Dream didn’t drink the milk soon, he would experience that dizzying peak shortly. 

Even now, Ranboo could feel the weight in his arms, as if he had been swinging this tool for hours. A quick swig from his own bottle followed, and he clinked it against the obsidian to get Dream’s attention. “Drink, and I’ll help you carry…. maybe 5 of those books.” Deep down, part of him couldn’t help but wonder how he could’ve written such a multitude of novels with his hand feeling constantly slugged against his desk. The sheer willpower it would take to budge from the straw that served as his bedding just to add to his words was something he could respect of him.

Silence fell as his words went ignored, the second row of obsidian excavated around the time Dream finally stopped his book extraction. He chose the volume he wanted to take, black pen reading “Journal” on its cover. What sat on the floor around them were titles that read words like “The Bewitching Hour” or “The Accursed Road.” It wasn’t surprising that he had so many stories of such bleak topics. Ranboo wouldn’t write eloquent love stories surrounded by layers of obsidian and solitude either.

At first, Ranboo thought he was going to have to dig them out alone. But Dream finally spoke up to ask him a question he knew was on both of their minds. “Do you really think we can make it out...” he didn’t complete the sentence as he furrowed his brows, trying to remember Ranboo’s name. 

“I do. And it’s Ranboo… the one who may or may not have blown up the community house.” He wanted to pry the book away from Dream and hand him a pickaxe instead, but Dream was clutching the cover against his chest, tugging at the spiral spine and hugging it tight enough to crease the orange jumpsuit he had on. 

“Tch. There’s still dozens of cubic meters of lava all around us even after you tear down those walls...” Dream had yet to take the milk, but at the very least wasn't stopping him from removing the obsidian. His lifelessly colored pupils observed chunks of the block he once knew so well leave their former place and pile up in the only space he inhabited for months. 

“I teleported past the lava to get here. All we have to worry about is making it past the final walls before we get noticed.” Ranboo knew he had a distance limit with his power, but he was fortunate enough to barely cover the lava walls with his current radius of mastery. “I know you haven’t picked up a weapon in ages, but I need your help.”

When he failed to get a reaction, he revised his words. “Dream, I don’t think I made myself clear enough… You are going to help me, or we’re both done for.” He told himself not to regret this strong tone, that if it took a stern voice to make sure they wouldn’t both be getting jail time, so be it. 

Ranboo heard bare feet scoot across the ground as the journal was moved from Dream’s chest to beneath his armpit to free his hands. Within seconds a pop of a bottle cap and long gulps came from behind him. Something changed in Dream the moment he used such a commanding tone. It was almost like he was conditioned to take orders from that manner of speech. 

The only sound other than his tapping away at the obsidian was interrupted by a glass bottle dropping with a resound shatter, synchronized with the clap of his journal loosening from beneath his armpit. Startled, Ranboo turned around to see Dream with his head between his hands. 

“Are- are you unable to have milk?” He knew it was a terrible guess, but he had no idea what this reaction meant. In response, Dream quivered, drool coming from his bottom lip. 

“Nngh...” Dream whined, but it was subtle enough to go unnoticed by Ranboo. He recovered enough from his breathless swaying to look up with pupils that were no longer the glassy, “dead fish” eyes he had for so long.

Though his teeth were yellow and his frame was diminutive enough to be mistaken for an age sizable factors below his actual one, Ranboo could see in him a chance at recovery. In those brilliant green eyes, the same color of emeralds he often saw locked behind reinforced glass, he found hope. Once Dream was physically sound enough to give answers- maybe- just maybe- would he be able to-

Dream picked up half of the shattered bottle, and Ranboo had half a second to react as he flung it straight at his face, his body reacting automatically and teleporting him out of harm’s way. 

“What’s gotten into you?” Ranboo cried, failing to see how Dream’s eyeball motions were irregular, darting up, down, left, right, even in circles. His journal was stepped on multiple times as he trampled over it in his confusion. He had gotten too used- far too used- to the dizzying exhaustion. This sharpness and defined clarity made his world break, the thin fabric of an omnipresent now brimming through a willfully ignorant past.

“What games now, Tommy? What are you pulling- you’ll kill me any second, won’t you…!“

“I’ll bring you to George!” Ranboo brought his arms up before his eyes, shielding himself from what he thought was going to be another broken bottle as his teleportation went on a self-imposed “cool down.” Said barrage never came, as Dream froze in place. 

“George…” he murmured like his lips were getting used to saying them after having that world-shattering liquid. And to his trial, the word tasted sweet and reassuring in his lips. He dropped the second half of the smashed bottle, nearly stomping on it and cutting his feet open as he tried to step away. Ranboo dared to look up, and he saw Dream’s palm against his face, smacking his forehead for the mistake.

“Not again… I keep seeing other things when they’re not there, or not them.” He wasn't making objective sense, but Ranboo could tell what he was trying to say. “The times I’ve called a guard ‘George’ or ‘Sapnap…’ but I can’t remember the last time ‘Tommy’ slipped out...” 

“It’s fine- I get it. You’ve gone through a lot, but it ends today. We’re going to get out of here, and everything will be alright, ok?” Ranboo tiptoed back over to his work, relieved to see his words reach without a need for a stern voice as Dream followed and even helped remove the obsidian barring them from the outside world. 

“You must have someone you want to bring back to life. That’s the only one reason why people’d visit me after all this.” Dream heaved the obsidian by kneeling on the ground and distributing the brunt of the weight throughout his body so as to not strain his back. He still managed to watch how he pushed his physical strain even now, and this led Ranboo to be completely honest with him.

“You’re right. I do have someone I want to bring back to life.” Ranboo knocked out the last bit of obsidian, coming face to face with a sizzling wall of lava. However, he didn’t pay it any mind as he turned to Dream with the fluid serving as a backdrop for his earnest promise. 

“You.”

* * *

Blissful exile. George never thought he’d be able to put those words together, but just about any oxymoron of a phrase could work with Sapnap. 

The confusing relationship they had blundered headfirst into had been a mix of spontaneous passion, a need to form a bridge over a gaping chasm of grief, and a desire to repay some forehead flicks over the dying embers of a campfire. 

They tripped and stumbled their way into moving into a remade version of George’s dear mushroom house, miles away from the original. The past remnants of pained memories of the house’s design and eventual fate were forgotten over hands woven together and lips swept carelessly over one another's. 

George, although he didn’t realize it, had already been drawing closer to Sapnap before they went from being a trio to a duo. They were the attachments sacrificed for a fruitless ambition, and thus were destined to tether to each other.

But as sudden as their relationship was, the payoff was massive. The weeks flew by as quickly as they did with the rise and fall of Dream. Sorrow melted with soft touches and sweet whispers pressed past earlobes on a polka dot mattress. Memories became history, and old feelings for distant love interests crumbled with the remains of L’Manburg. 

Of course, they weren’t just sickly sweet, sappy lovers who lived only to garner “awws” from all who laid eyes on them. They had their disagreements, ranging from petty arguments to disgruntled nights spent in separate beds.

One of these moments, fortunately being on the mild side, occurred that fateful morning of Dream’s escape. George started off the morning with a groan, tired of repeating himself for the umpteenth time as he pressed, “Sapnap. I don’t want to do anything for my birthday. Just go to the meeting.” 

“Hell naw.” Lazy mornings were no strangers to the duo, as Sapnap dangled his feet off the table. “Doctor George, today Sapnap is so, so sick. He’s like, dying from his coughs right now, don’t you see?” A clearly faux, half-hearted hack came from his mouth, followed by a few seconds of him clearing his throat with his fist balled up in front of his lips, the duration of which lasting longer than the actual “cough.”

“You’ve taken so many sick days. You’re gonna get a lot of flak from everyone.” George didn’t fancy Sapnap’s job much, mainly because it involved a lot of “hush hush,” or so he put it.

On paper, it was the containment of threats to the SMP, a task force created after Dream had nearly brought their home to its knees. But now, they were treating it like any other occupation. According to Sapnap, they’d go in, patrol around and handle menial tasks, and go home. Sapnap’s meetings went from being once a day, to once a week, to every other week, to every other month, to whenever they remembered to do so.

“Oh, George. You know we don’t get anything done at those meetings.” But this wasn’t objectively a bad thing. Having the love of peace drown out any need for a rigorous monitoring of said peace was, of course, far better than having Sapnap constantly away to contain threats to the safety of their homeland. Everyone was in this unanimous agreement that this tranquility could be everything they asked for, and nothing else could entice them from it. 

When George grumbled something about him still being irresponsible, Sapnap tried a different approach. “Gog, it’s your birthday! You think I’m going to go to some dumb meeting over spending the day kissing my birthday boy?” He opened his arms out to him, inviting him onto the table. 

“Like I’d want to spend all day kissing you with your stinky breath.” He waved his hands in front of his nose, making sure to exaggerate the motion for Sapnap’s eyes.

“You put up with it for my kisses, lover boy, we both know that.” George, hearing enough from him, got up from the couch and gave himself into Sapnap’s arms.

“Mhm, no. You’d just go crazy without my kisses, and I don’t want you to be a headache...so I let you have them.” He closed his eyes and scooted his head up towards his, letting up the very lips he spoke so boldly of brush up against his from below. Short and sweet, the brief kiss broke moments later so they could cozy up together, with George reaching an arm back around Sapnap as he sat with his back against his chest. Their slight height difference hardly mattered with George slouching so Sapnap’s chin could rest on his head.

As far as petty arguments went, it was hard to win when Sapnap pulled out his arms and brought him in. George could rest against his chest for ages, breathing in the familiar pine tree smell of their shared, scented conditioner. He could listen to him go on and on about the mundanest of topics as he let the hours drift by, only stopping when they felt each other’s stomachs rumble. 

But a faint white wisp of a word, similar to the white outline of steam from a simmering cup of tea, formed before George’s eyes and swam towards Sapnap’s head. The whisper ducked beneath his bandanna and went straight into his ear. This was a peculiar sight, as George can’t remember the last time they received whispers, the need for them becoming obsolete with their “global chat” for everyone involved in the old SMP to use. 

“Is it from Tommy? That kid will bug you over anything.” Despite wishing for him not to shirk his duties earlier, George was now feeling a strong desire to cling. If they were already set on not having Sapnap leave the house today, why change their minds halfway through and make the parting worse?

As he waited for Sapnap to listen to the entire whisper, something felt off. If it was merely Tommy annoying him about whether or not he was coming to a useless meeting, he wouldn’t tense up like this. But George could clearly feel Sapnap’s muscles budge up, his all-encompassing embrace over his body retracting as he brought his hands up to his ear to hear the message better and replay it.

“...what?” George straightened his back, pulling away from him and turning to meet him face to face. Sapnap closed his eyes, the breath he drew in wracking his body with a shudder. 

“George… I’m really caught between a rock and a hard place right now.”

“Why?” George felt like all he was asking were questions. And if Sapnap didn’t give clear answers, he feared their cutesy birthday moments would be tainted for the remainder of the day.

“I can’t say much, but we’re supposed to be voting on something today. They want me there to cast a vote in person.” Sapnap let his hand down from his ear, groaning. “They know it’s your birthday today, but they still go and pull something like this.”

Although he was already missing the warmth of his body, George knew that there wasn’t any reason to be fretting over their time for affection. “Just go. We’ve got the rest of today for this.”

“But it’s- not something I- I want...” George had to stop and consider how to respond to that vague, trailed off point. Was it not wanting to leave the house that bothered Sapnap, or was it not wanting to vote on the topic? The latter didn’t make any sense- the task force had nothing to vote on other than meaningless budgeting or housekeeping. 

“You can spare a few hours. You’re not going to die without me; even if it feels like it with how amazing I am for you.” George rarely had to be the one to hype up their relationship, with Sapnap always going on and on about how he’d move mountains for them. He hoped a kiss to his cheek would make up for his lack of persuasive power in words.

Prompted to act with the kiss, Sapnap returned the affection with a one-armed hug. “I’ll bring back a cake so big... that… that you’ll be stuffed.” Sapnap spoke like he was telling himself to do this, not to George. Before George could think on the tone, he hopped off the table. Even though he was only going towards their bedroom to change, George already wished he was back up on the table with him. 

“See you soon, Sap.” Minutes later, the click of the door and a distant goodbye brought back the emptiness George had once treated with a 3rd person. He went to fill the silent air with the music of a jukebox and the company of stories within realms of written works.

His figure drew up against the side of a special room, a library with two rocking chairs for the inner bookworm and music lover in both he and Sapnap. Wanting to read by sunlight, he first drew open the curtains. Perusing their disc collection, he found a fitting classical tune and sat down with a time tested, award-winning book to let the rhythms and words sweep him into a spell of immersion.

By the time the sun went down and George had replaced his book with inferior others and a mug of tea, the spell wore off. He hurt his finger over the frequency of the messages he sent to both Sapnap and the world chat. Fretting over a failure to get a response from anyone, he grew delirious and refused to go to bed before Sapnap got home. The room fell silent once again, the disc removed and the books closed. The light source illuminating the tall oak shelves of books became an orange hue of candlelight instead of the rays of the sun, the moon at its zenith in the sky.

The words of the books he spent hours looking at felt like they could leak off the page and dance across his vision. Asides from the world chat, they were all he looked at in those hours of unexplained solitude, their stories doing little to stanch the growing agony in his heart. Without reading them now, the hours trickled by at a snail’s pace as their grandfather clock reminded him of his poor choice with its taunting tolls. The bedroom, a few steps away, called out to him, implored him to give up.

Midnight, the witching hour, had already struck hours prior. It was delayed, the moment he began to experience the work of the supernatural.

Because George heard a ghost.

He knew they weren’t real. However, what else could it be, when he heard the voice from a source of impossibility?

How could it be that he heard….

_Dream whispers to you: Happy Birthday George._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please dont kick me for the cliffhanger
> 
> my twitter is @amemelame
> 
> please roast me in the comments if you didn't like it lol i wanna improve
> 
> kudos appreciated but not necessary


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